Earlier this year the former Lord Mayor of Belfast equated Sinn Fein with Isis, and he has been accused of condoning calls for ethnic cleansing when he voiced approval for a a call for Catholics to be "expelled, nullified, or interned."

In 1994 the Ulster Defence Association had published a document intending to "establish an ethnic Protestant homeland". It discussed taking large sections of the Catholic community hostage as "bargaining chips" for the release of Protestants living in counties where the British Army no longer patrolled.

As a DUP press officer at the time, Mr Wilson said: "While some will no doubt denounce and ridicule their plan, nevertheless it shows that some loyalist paramilitaries are looking ahead and contemplating what needs to be done to maintain our separate Ulster identity.

"While I have always been careful never to threaten a Bosnian type situation in Northern Ireland, it is clear that others foresee such a possibility. It is unfortunate that Ulstermen are now having to contemplate such dramatic and radical action."

He served as Northern Ireland's environment minister from 2008, but was not much concerned about man-made climate change, describing much of the science surrounding the issue as "hysterical pseudo religion".

Not singling people out for mockery or anything, genuinely curious to hear your takes on the outcome and potential future for the Tories. Especially with respect to the DUP.

Yeah, it does alerts.

Honestly, I don't consider the outcome a disaster. At the end of the day the Conservatives are still in government, and while I disagree strongly with the DUP on all the same things everyone else does, unless the Tories are stupid they won't give them any real influence. Certainly I'd be very wary of any formal agreement for that reason, although I believe May intends to try for one.

I also think, while I'm not going to deny Corbyn did better than I expected, that this election actually proved that his policies will never be capable of winning an election. He was against the most incompetent Conservative leader of all time, who ran the worst campaign I've ever seen. Plus he actually turned out the youth vote in unprecedented numbers, and yet he still fell well short of a majority. There's no real scope for any further substantial increases in the youth vote, and if people weren't persuaded to vote for him against the Tories by May's campaign they never will be. Even I would have strongly considered voting for Labour if it was led by someone like Keir Starmer, with more moderate policies.

Also, I'd be very surprised if May lasts more than a few months. Her reputation is destroyed, and there's no way the Tories are going to let her anywhere near another election campaign. The only question is who would take over from her. Personally I'd like Ruth Davidson to come down from Scotland, but the fact she doesn't have a seat means it can't be a short-term option. I guess Amber Rudd would probably be the best option of the current MPs, unless David Davis fancies another crack at it.

Also interested to hear his take on the number of Tories saying their policies were terrible ideas to run and the dissatisfaction with how May's been running things til now.

Not sure if this is aimed at me or Richard, but I've made no secret of the fact I think the Tories ran a terrible campaign and that May proved herself an incompetent leader. I had no issue with May when she became leader, and felt it was a smart decision to call an election when she did. But then she didn't so much drop the ball with the campaign, as throw it to the ground, pull out a shotgun and shoot herself repeatedly for the entire duration of the campaign.

You can't attack Labour for a poorly costed manifesto (which it was) and then fail to cost your own. You can't base your entire campaign about strong and stable government and then u-turn on a fairly reasonable policy under minimal pressure. You can't base your campaign on how great your leader is and then have said leader refuse to do any TV interviews or take part in the debates. And if asked what the naughtiest think you've ever done is, say literally anything that isn't "running through fields of wheat". It really isn't hard to realise how stupid that sounds, and anyone with half a brain knows the only answer to that question is something to the effect of "I can't say that on TV", which is exactly what Corbyn said.

Frankly, this entire campaign by the Tories was like watching an episode of The Thick of It, except with even more breathtaking incompetence than anyone in that show ever managed.

People that don't know the DUP and their brand of unionism are in for a crash course this summer. I'm sure burning effigies of the pope and Gerry Adams along with tricolours over the 12th of July will go down well on the national news this time.

Last edited by barrybarryk on Sat Jun 10, 2017 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Saw a retweeted video earlier today saying how the alliance between the Consrvatives and DUP might not even be able to happen (or be an official partnership anyway) due to some of the Good Friday agreement terms? I guess if this is the case it'll still go ahead but be a "we'll scratch your back if you scratch ours" kind of thing?

I also think, while I'm not going to deny Corbyn did better than I expected, that this election actually proved that his policies will never be capable of winning an election. He was against the most incompetent Conservative leader of all time, who ran the worst campaign I've ever seen. Plus he actually turned out the youth vote in unprecedented numbers, and yet he still fell well short of a majority. There's no real scope for any further substantial increases in the youth vote, and if people weren't persuaded to vote for him against the Tories by May's campaign they never will be. Even I would have strongly considered voting for Labour if it was led by someone like Keir Starmer, with more moderate policies.

My stuff was aimed at Richard but on this I'd disagree. When you come back against a party that was until a few weeks ago conflicted, a continuous smear campaign against you across the media and devastating defeat during the 2015 election, victory against even the most inept PM is going to be difficult to say the least given how people vote. Labour gained 40% of the vote, which during any other election would actually be a winning amount, a landslide in some years. They managed to secure the vote of the Labour core in England and Wales which was largely seen as impossible by critics, they even made gains in Scotland even though Scottish Labour absolutely sabotaged themselves and did everything they could to lose votes. On top of that so many seats were desperately close in the Tory heartland, seats like Amber Rudd's being as close as it was is unimaginable and the stolen seats demonstrates that Labour has momentum, and direction is just as important as the actual amount right now. Gaining 30 seats shows a big resurgence and will no doubt make many people who were thinking Labour a lame duck re-evaluate their position.

The Tories are descending into utter chaos right now, everybody hates May, moderate Tories aren't happy about having to work with the DUP, Boris Johnson is apparently going to challenge May's leadership, May is getting ruthlessly attacked by the Tory press and the Brexit negotiations are due to start next week.

May is going into these negotiations whilst distracted by the chaos in her own party, she looks like a joke of a leader, and the EU aren't exactly going to have any sympathy for her, I cannot see at this point, how May will be able to get any sort of good deal from the EU, I'm certain that we will be leaving with no deal, leaving the economy in ruin, and the government is too weak and divided to deal with any major economic crisis.

Even if May is replaced, the Tories are still bitterly divided, whoever leads the party will face constant attacks from rival factions of the party, it'll be chaos.
I cannot see how this government can last five years, and I cannot see the Tories winning 42.4% of the vote again.

The Tories didn't win by that much, with a lot of their seats having slim majorities, even if Labour can't increase it's 40% vote share, it can benefit from the Tories collapsing.

Nothing about this election is good for the country too be honest, even from a Labour supporters point of view, a weak government right now is a disaster.

Edit: First post election poll puts Labour ahead of the Tories for the first time in years.
Things can only get worse for the Tories.

Last edited by LostNoob on Sat Jun 10, 2017 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Greens are way left of Labour and also half their policies are clinically insane. Lib Dems are currently rabidly anti-brexit, which I voted for. UKIP are an utter irrelevance, and I'm pretty sure weren't who you were referring to anyway. No-one else stood in my area, although since most of the nationalist parties are somewhere in the region of Corbyn anyway that doesn't greatly matter.

I know a guy who didn't vote because he genuinely wasn't aware that there were more than 2 options and had not heard of the Lib Dems when I mentioned our ballot had 4 candidates.

<Kaeetayel> Go for a team entirely composed of Eeveelutions
<Princess> that's effort
<Princess> I need to buy the stones/go to rocks/make them happy/touch Eevee
<Kaeetayel> The last one doesn't sound too bad

Trying to get my mother to vote was like trying to put a large sphere in a tiny square shaped box. She's the only one in the family who didn't go to vote. She never does. Her words are "what's the point, they're all liars, they're all as bad as each other". But had said she would have voted for the green party if she had gone out to vote as "they don't seem as evil as the others". Glad the rest of the family at least went out to vote (we all voted Labour) even if she didn't.

I also think, while I'm not going to deny Corbyn did better than I expected, that this election actually proved that his policies will never be capable of winning an election.

Come of it, I'm getting tired of the smugness of thinking people can predict the future;

He will never be leader of the labour party;
He will never last 6 months;
He will never win re election;
Labour will by a dead party;
Labour will lose the next 4 elections;
He will give the tories a landslide majority;

Haven't you realized that at this point anything is possible now? Are you really that sure that there is no chance of him winning an election at this point?

So his policies are never capable of winning an election, yet his vote count was 12,874,985, now let's see;

More than Cameron (both times),
More than Blair (2nd & 3rd time),

So considering, his own party, the media and the polls were all not in his favor, he still managed to increase his vote share massively. Now that the narrative has changed, the conservatives are in shambles after an embarrassing election, you still don't think there is even a POSSIBILITY of winning an election. I'm not even saying it might or will happen, but to say he is incapable is really foolish at this point.

He will never be leader of the labour party;
He will never last 6 months;
He will never win re election;
Labour will by a dead party;
Labour will lose the next 4 elections;
He will give the tories a landslide majority

I've probably said most of those things, perhaps me predicting that Labour will win the next election may not be too helpful given my track record
I don't want to jinx it.

<Kaeetayel> Go for a team entirely composed of Eeveelutions
<Princess> that's effort
<Princess> I need to buy the stones/go to rocks/make them happy/touch Eevee
<Kaeetayel> The last one doesn't sound too bad

I was planning on staying up all tomorrow night watching the results with my partner but have decided to get away so I will be voting in the morning and then flying from Manchester to Munich, I will be meeting up with a friend and he has told me to bring a suit and we will be going over the boarder to Austria and then staying over in Liechtenstein I have no idea why but its exciting and should take my mind off things a little, if the worst happened I might just stay!

Was a hung parliament a reason to stay away, or was it May siding with the DUP?

I mean the racist portion of the brexit vote is what secured the tory vote in the marginal seats. The ones that remained tory or won off labour were brexit dominant areas, and the ones that swung to labour were remain dominant areas.

Basically most rational remain voters have accepted we are leaving (though still have to endure from the fanatics that they haven't because they're still complaining) and therefore will want to lean more to staying in the single market, due to the unease from Mays viewpoint of no deal is better than bad deal.

The brexit heavy areas we're told that they could get access to the single market as well as have border control dictated entirely by the UK not the EU. The tory government has been tasked with delivering this pledge which is obviously not feasible, as you cant have both access while denying of the movement of people across boarders, so the Tory's have opted for we will try for this but if we cant we'll just have no deal.

At least this election has helped cement the fact that the whole free movement argument (probably the largest brexit argument) was an entirely racist and xenophobic driven argument. Brexit voters concerned PRIMARILY with these factors of brexit have been effectively been given a choice of either remaining in the single market or stopping the free movement of people. They have opted for the latter by supporting the tory's pledge, and outed themselves as racists and bigots (whether they did so intentionally is irrelevant and knowing many of these voters rationales they will still probably deny they are either).

So brexit still (while not talked about much) distinctively influenced the English and welsh votes regarding tory and labour swings. Scotland is different however, I think that's more a mix of complacency, not wanting another independence referendum (so voters shift to tory to avoid labour/snp coalition/cooperation in wake of growing labor momentum), partially brexit and the anti tory vote being split between snp and labour. The latter in my opinion is labor's failure to capitalise properly on the short comings of the 60 or so MPs the SNP managed to get last election, and it is certainly something labour will have to focus on next election with more years of austerity (why hasn't this ended yet Nicola you promised to reduce it etc). All of these contributed to Tories jumping form 3rd to 1st place in several constituencies.

So yeah, positive result going forward. People have shown they are fed up. The number of young voters is only likely to grow, bear in mind a large majority of them were unable to vote because they didn't receive their poll cards in time, though that wouldn't have made a massive difference. The racist brexiteers have now been smeared in the un-civilised and disgusting views that they hold in this modern society, and they fact they won't admit to that proves the views are not acceptable at all in our society. I've always believed firmly that racism was a major driver in brexit which is sad and frankly appalling and if anything has distanced me more from my national affiliation than anything in my entire life.

I also think now that if you voted brexit for other reasons (principles, economics etc) then you can no longer deny if you did before that a large driving factor of the success of brexit was racism/bigotry/xenophobia and without that the brexit you wanted for your own reasons would not have happened and trying to disassociate yourself from these people is no different from the Trump election and the KKK vote. These views have no place in a progressive society and using these views to aid a movement for you own separate reasons does grant you a moral high ground over these people. Especially because in my personal opinion (which is the driving factor of why I voted remain) as a country throughout history has been hugely influential in shaping modern Europe, it should be our responsibility to be part of it's governing body, and to help form and if necessary reform a progressive international society across the continent. As a communal species we should seek to unite as a progressive society as an ideal. And yes it's an ideal, conflict is always going to get in the way, but as one of the more influential countries in the world we have to lead by example before we can expect others to agree. And if you can't see that then you should probably live on the f ucking moon away from everyone who is not a wettie. And by the moon I mean Venus' moon. By which I mean Mercury.

TSF sQuad life ~ pour one out for Sangmin
"People who work at Nisa:'Look, I have a job'." [Decretum, B&M employee circa May 2016]